Digital literacies in general and focusing on information.

According to Nicky Hockly (2013), digital literacies refer to our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal. "We are not just talking about a checklist of technical skills, but also about the social practices that surround the use of new media".

We, as future teachers of English need to bear in mind that communication is part of technology and students are closed to it. So it is really important that teachers can keep up-to-date with new networks in order to attract students´attention and make the lesson more relevant to them.

Digital literacies have four main areas: those with a focus on language, on connections, on information, and on (re)design. If we take into account the definition provided by CILIP's (Character Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Council in 2004, information literacy is knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner.

We use the webpage by Discovery Education  to create a crossword for a hypothetical group of students. First, we are going to show them a picture of the Olympic Village where there will be referential numbers on each stadium.

Students will be expected to look at the numbers and complete the following activity with the corresponding sport according to their intuitions and the information the pictures provide.

To conclude, we can say that Discovery Education webpage is a valuable resource because it offers a breadth and depth of digital media content. Also, it provides as Nicole Wagner, a teacher of Tavan Elementary who writes for Discovery Eduaction, mentions "multiple and varied exposure to content".



References:
- Hockly, N. (n.d.). Digital literacies: What are they and why should we care? Retrieved July 05, 2016, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/digital-literacies-what-are-they-why-should-we-care

Digital natives or digital immigrants?

We strongly believe, as we were born in the 90’s, that we are digital natives.  We belong to the generation in which computers were used to do practical works and internet was used to look for information for different subjects. 

We agree with Marc Prensky (2001) when he mentions in his article that learners nowadays think and process information differently from their predecessors, as they have different access to information, their thinking patterns have changed. For example, our primary or secondary school teachers did not have the opportunity to take advantage of the internet when studying. It is also true that in the future we will be digital immigrants because as years go by, there are technological advances too and we will have to adapt our teaching to the digital native learners.

On the other hand, we do not agree with Prensky (2001) when he says that digital immigrants have little appreciation for these new skills, because digital immigrants teachers are more aware of the digital native students they have in their classroom, so they can see the need to keep up-to-date with the new technologies to make their classes more interesting and adequate to the student’s needs.

We think that it is our job as teachers to make students feel engage with the class  and adapt our language and tasks to the “new” students to succeed in our classrooms and also bear in mind the context in which we are working to integrate all our students.

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